Dana”.
We had a parking procedure in place for a long time that the last person out the door at midnight parked in a specific spot where the security camera could see that person leave the building, walk to their car, and get in. In Taiwan, the one that was odd to me was addressing people as ‘dears’ whether in the email salutation or in person. If you reply only to the sender, anyone else on the group email who is going to reply all to advance the discussion won’t know to remove you. My brain says this when reading it: You just asked me a question. Then, if you ask me to “please advise” as to whether I agree with your proposed next steps, I am indeed happy to advise. Some physicians can get a bit touchy about being “questioned” by a pharmacist, so I use please advise because it can help sooth feelings and imply that they are still in charge. I don’t use it myself but that is because in most places I have worked it is used to end emails from managers or directors. It’s work. Could be some weird cultural tick at my company, so it’s not like that everywhere.
I mean, intellectually, I agree with everyone who’s said “you’re overthinking this.” But I can’t STOP overthinking it and want to know why I’m overthinking it to begin with. “Can I help anyone?” versus “Who was next?”
I am going tell my spouse this before bed tonight and see how he interprets it. Get your English checked! “Have you booked that hotel I only asked you about on the phone 30 seconds ago? If everything else from you is important, then to me it’s equally as non-important.
If anyone is taking routine email language as demanding and bratty etc., it’s on them. This person I know says it all the time (All. By describing the problem and outlining the requested solution, the rest of your email is already telling me to do the needful.
Because it is deferential, I would view it as an obnoxious phrase only if used by a manager to a direct report and not vice versa. Please assist on this matter or kindly assist on this matter? He sends documents to me to get rid of a blank page (when all it takes is a single backspace to get rid of it) and when he got a macbook I was constantly with him at 30 minutes at a time trying to teach him how to right click or minimize a window, how to locate a file he has saved, etc. I think the reason the qualifiers miff people is that they have the exact opposite of the intended effect. tag.parentNode.insertBefore(s, tag); Just had an email saying another comment had been left.
She did not understand what I was talking about.
It has been an awesome way to improve my English skills. “I’m too stupid to even attempt to determine what the next course of action might be, so I’m not even going to suggest anything.” w.attachEvent("onload", loader); Just ask a direct question or make a decision or leave me alone, but quit spouting off “please advise” and then wait for me to fill the silence. I disagree. 8. ooooo! We used to have this.
To me, please advise means ‘please write back something’. I always wondered if one person at the third office really liked the phrase, and everyone just followed her lead. If you didn’t give a specific direction for how you want them to respond (“Please advise if I have authority to do X, and let me know if you have any questions.”) the only response you would get was, “Thanks!” That is less than helpful when you need authority to do something ASAP. Please advise. Sort of a “I can’t move forward without a decision.”, Yes, it can be a little like “this is me, putting the ball in your court. Is there a long term way to get people to stop giving us unsolicited sales calls? Then the email request gets ignored by everyone thinking someone else will do it until the LW actually points a finger and say, “that means YOU, Wakeen”. I use “Please advise” every so often, and I think I basically use it as a step up from “Let me know what you think.” Specifically, for “Let me know what you think,” I would consider a lack of preference an acceptable answer. Or at least there have been, everywhere I’ve worked.
Some of this is probably just cultural (meaning office culture, not overall culture). Oooh, yeah. How about “Friendly reminder”?
Make sense?”.
I also tend to work in industries where if someone wants to make it known that they are upset, they will be a lot more blatent about it than saying “Please advise.”.
That’s what I envisioned, too, because it’s what I see. Early in my career I had a boss who would act super confused when I made a mistake. Running errands: “I have to get the needful done.” They also might just be doing it out of habit, or because they learned it from someone more senior earlier in their careers. . I then give background on my question. So I only associate this phrase with mistakes and anxiety, plus a little bit of public humiliation thrown in for good measure (this wasn’t the greatest office environment!). I’ll ask for advice, input, and/or guidance, but never with that hated two-word statement.
There must be a lot of secretly snotty people in the South who are thinking mean things when they say “Bless your heart”, but I’m glad I’ve not met them. On the other side, is the writer genuinely seeking information or help? I’m more likely to say, “Please let me know your thoughts.”. It reads to me like, “I expect you do to this”. “Please Advise” I admit it’s hard sometimes giving people the benefit of the doubt… especially if they are bratty in person! my employee doesn’t wear a bra on Zoom meetings — should I say anything? That way, I hope, people know why they’re on the email and if they need to respond back. Please advise (your dept.)
Just decide not to read too much into something. “This weekend I decided to reorder the teapot lid process from Z to A, rather than A to Z because (insert reasons). !”
!” Using “please advise” is my office-appropriate way of telling someone they’re on my list.
I just think it’s a nice transition to end an email. Thank you.”. I dot: “Thoughts?” for that. Attempt to manage you/assign tasks and they aren’t your manager? Would you have done something different? Or at the very least tell him what I think needs to be done, and just ask for his sign-off that it’s ok. And it’s also a way of warning others that people are jumping line and I am not happy about it. if (w.addEventListener) { I work with someone who uses “thoughts?” a lot. “What did you get done?”: “Oh, just the needful.”. I worked at a hospital with thousands of employees and some erroneous email went out to the entire hospital listserv (I don’t even remember the original email), and for DAYS we kept getting emails from people saying “Please take me off this email chain!” and “Please stop hitting reply all!” DAYS OF THIS. I use that a fair amount but I use it collaboration, when I’ve formed a plan and want to run it by one or two others because I literally want to know if my plan makes sense. I am so flummoxed by the OP’s overly negative reaction to this. when i worked in a university advising office the front desk clerks would send out emails saying “x people in queue – please advise” as a way to remind everyone they should be advising students or if it had suddenly gotten really busy. Can you please answer one of the 4 emails or 2 voicemails on this topic? So it’s not on top of a question.
Mmmmkay?”.
I’d never say to another person, “Please advise.”, I tend to write like I talk, and I really, really try to avoid any written phrases that don’t scan like normal speech. That’s going to tip it towards a stern request that you fix something without any further input from them. All afternoon we received hundreds of emails “remove me from email list and please do not reply all.” Senior c-suite exec was pissed and scheduled everyone who responded to that email for a session on email etiquette. When you ask the question, it gives people a chance to decide if they want to know more, or not. recommend to all. I have a lady who has “Thank YOU!” (note the application of all-caps) as part of her email signature — I read it differently but I don’t interact with her on a day-to-day basis so I just suck it up. I used to find it irritating and then people I work with started using it more so there was no point in being irritated.
I managed to screw up pretty regularly in the third category, which led to me being pretty gun-shy about replying at all unless I was explicitly asked a question or given an action item. It does have a slightly more formal feel to it than I prefer, but it’s not like the horrid and condescending “gentle reminder.”. Sure, but there’s no reason to avoid “Please advise.”. For example, I’ll try to call one of my peers. If it’s someone who works for me, I don’t want to be notified of a problem without their thoughts/suggestions/proposed solutions. We KNOW that some cultures crowd up and breath down your neck; we KNOW in our heads that it is a cultural difference — this does not prevent the visceral reaction to being crowded that people who ‘require’ more personal space feel. This is such an interesting conversation. It would be annoying in the context of a yes/no question, for sure.
I do as well. I wonder what would happen if you just said no to “Can I ask you a question” for a few days. var s = d.createElement("script"), tag = d.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; For awhile, I used “Ten-four!” with another manager as kind of a joke to let her know I got a message, but it doesn’t really work with everyone. Now I use it myself naturally. The opposite way is: knoweldgabley explain something “factual” and then use “make sense?” to see if the other person is following you. Especially annoying if it’s a repeat offender – one of my co-workers and I used to joke that it actually meant “please give me advice so I can ignore it and do whatever I want anyway, and then blame you when it went wrong because then I can CYA and say ‘well, I asked Meg Murry for her advice’ and carefully neglect to mention that I didn’t actually follow her advice”. Author: Douglas AHHHHH. I suspect part of the reason for our culture being this way is that we have a fairly open floorplan, so if we were to routinely talk at our desks, it would be disruptive. Thanks!”. It is truly the Phrase That Keeps on Giving. I’m rapidly coming to that conclusion as well. They use “gentle reminder” a lot which drives me batty. With no punctuation. :). Work days are long enough without added “stuff”. 4. yes, but your reaction to it doesn’t necessarily reflect the reality of it. The result is now that my partner and I “needful” each other all the time. I’ve used “just bumping this to the top of your inbox!” before, but only with people who I know are pretty chill and aren’t going to interpret it as “you clearly don’t know how to manage your workload so please let me nag you”.